(Lesson 95 Kenneth Wapnick – Journey through the workbook of ACIM)
I am one Self, united with my Creator. This is a unique lesson, being the only one where, midway through, Jesus drops his discussion of the thought for the day and addresses us specifically about what to do when we do not do what is asked; i.e., forget to do the daily exercises.
It is a remarkable discussion, and we will spend considerable time on it. The first three paragraphs deal with the lesson’s theme, a continuation of the discussion of our true Self. As I mentioned earlier, this series of twenty lessons (91 through 110) contrasts our true Self as Christ with the separated self of the ego.
We are thus reminded again, in this lesson, of the essence of our Identity: oneness.
The Son of God is not divided into multitudinous fragments, but is one, and His Oneness is at one with His Source. (1:1-3)
TODAY’S IDEA ACCURATELY DESCRIBES YOU AS GOD CREATED YOU. YOU ARE ONE WITHIN YOURSELF, AND ONE WITH HIM. YOURS IS THE UNITY OF ALL CREATION.
This is directly opposite to what the ego tells us. Its thought system began with the idea we separated from God, our Creator and Source, and as that thought evolved, it continued to separate, the result being we are separate from everyone and everything.
Thus the world was made, as described in the following passage, which we looked at earlier: “You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness.
It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it.
Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it. You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see. You do not realize the magnitude of that one error. It was so vast and so completely incredible that from it a world of total unreality had to emerge.
What else could come of it?
Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough, as you begin to look at them. But nothing you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and to force you to make further substitutions (T-18.I.4-5).”
The world is thus the opposite of the “Unity of all creation”.
Having its source in the thought of separation and fragmentation, the world of bodies can only be a place of separation and fragmentation; certainly not the home of God’s Son.
The belief that the world is our home denies the principle of the Atonement that states the unity of Heaven, the perfect wholeness of God and Christ, has never changed, which means we never left our Source. (1:4-5)
YOUR PERFECT UNITY MAKES CHANGE IN YOU IMPOSSIBLE. YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THIS, AND YOU FAIL TO REALIZE IT MUST BE SO, ONLY BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE CHANGED YOURSELF ALREADY.
This is the essence of the wrong-minded belief. Despite our right-minded self that desires to accept Jesus’ teaching, our ego self most certainly does not, for it seeks to preserve its changed and special identity. Statements like these reflect Jesus’ awareness of our resistance to learning the Son of God is changeless, which should help alleviate our guilt and need to hide our “sin” from him.
However, because we believe we have changed ourselves already, this change has become reality for us, and it no longer seems an option to believe otherwise. I am changed, which means I am separated from God and from all fragmented Sons as well. The state of perfect unity has become a dream.
Jesus will now describe this little self we believe is our reality: (2:1-2)
YOU SEE YOURSELF AS A RIDICULOUS PARODY ON GOD’S CREATION; WEAK, VICIOUS, UGLY AND SINFUL, MISERABLE AND BESET WITH PAIN.
SUCH IS YOUR VERSION OF YOURSELF; A SELF DIVIDED INTO MANY WARRING PARTS, SEPARATE FROM GOD, AND TENUOUSLY HELD TOGETHER BY ITS ERRATIC AND CAPRICIOUS MAKER, TO WHICH YOU PRAY.
Elsewhere in A Course in Miracles Jesus refers to the ego and the body as travesties on creation (T-24.VII.10:9); here we are called “a ridiculous parody.”
This is the “glorious” self we believe God created, which we have adopted as substitute for the truly glorious Self we are as God’s one Son, perfectly united within ourselves as Christ, and perfectly united with Him.
Thus Jesus shows us the contrast between these two selves.
If we raise ourselves above the battleground, return to the decision-making part of our minds and look back down upon this self, we would realize what we felt as so important and special, and has defined us, is a ridiculous parody of Who we are.
When we find ourselves becoming upset, regardless of its form or seeming cause, we need step back and look, saying to ourselves that our reactions are nothing more than ridiculous parodies of our Self. This means separating from this identity, our investment in being unfairly treated, and the pain of this perception.
This constellation of victimized thoughts and feelings establishes our bodies as real, proving conclusively that God is dead. This also means – happily to our egos – that Jesus is wrong and we are right. On one level, the “self divided into many warring parts” is the body, where one system is in opposition to another, and where we seek to remedy a problem in one part of the body, which then becomes painful for another part. But we are never totally happy for we are never integrated.
Fragmentation has triumphed over wholeness. On a larger level, we can also understand that this fragmented version of ourselves as the Son of God is at war with every other fragment. It is thus not only a war we wage within our physical and psychological selves, but with every other seemingly separated Son of God.
Ideas leave not their source: What is within must also be what is without. (2:3-5)
IT [OUR MAKER, THE EGO] DOES NOT HEAR YOUR PRAYERS, FOR IT IS DEAF. IT DOES NOT SEE THE ONENESS IN YOU, FOR IT IS BLIND. IT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, FOR IT IS SENSELESS AND UNDERSTANDS NOTHING.
This returns us to previous discussions: we have eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear, brains that do not think. Once we believe we are separate from God, we do not see anything but projected shadows of our own nothingness.
The body is irrelevant to true sight, or vision, which reflects the thought system of the Holy Spirit that is totally independent of our sensory apparatus. In a favorite passage, Jesus asks why we ask the “only thing in all the universe that does not know” our reality, to tell us what it is: “There is a stranger [the ego] in him [the Son of God], who wandered carelessly into the home of truth and who will wander off….
Ask not this transient stranger, “What am I?” He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know. Yet it is he you ask, and it is to his answer that you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance, and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide.
To it you turn to ask the meaning of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe of truth you ask, “How shall I look upon the Son of God?” (T-20.III.7:2, 5-10).”
The “thing” we ask to tell us who we are, “to which we pray,” is the ego, which is reflected in our bodies, brains, and sensory apparatus. We ask the body to tell us what reality is, but being made specifically to screen it out, it cannot know.
This is one more way Jesus gently reminds us we cannot understand anything. This also means that we cannot understand A Course in Miracles if we persist in trying to approach it from our perspective as individual and special selves.
The Course can be understood only when we detach from that self and return to the right-minded home of Jesus. This means relinquishing all thoughts about who we think we are.
In other words, we cannot understand truth (spirit) from the perspective of illusion (the body), as the following incisive passage from the text explicitly states: “Think you that you can bring truth to fantasy, and learn what truth means from the perspective of illusions Truth has no meaning in illusion. The frame of reference for its [truth’s] meaning must be itself. When you try to bring truth to illusions, you are trying to make illusions real, and keep them by justifying your belief in them (T-17.I.5:1-4).”
WE WILL ATTEMPT TODAY TO BE AWARE ONLY OF WHAT CAN HEAR AND SEE, AND WHAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE. WE WILL AGAIN DIRECT OUR EXERCISES TOWARDS REACHING YOUR ONE SELF, WHICH IS UNITED WITH ITS CREATOR. IN PATIENCE AND IN HOPE WE TRY AGAIN TODAY.
Jesus and the Holy Spirit represent the right-mind that sees through the vision of Christ, negating the importance or even reality of what our eyes see. However, we are not asked to deny our sight, but only the interpretation of what we see.
From the ego’s point of view, this always involves some aspect of difference, specialness, judgment, and attack.
Vision corrects this misinterpretation, clearing the way for the memory of our one Self to return to awareness.
These lines end the first part of the lesson. Through the beginning of paragraph 10, Jesus now speaks to us of our response when we forget to do the exercises and accuse ourselves of failure. This is extremely instructive, not only for what he says specifically about doing the workbook, but for its larger implications of undoing the thought system of separation and sin the ego has told us is reality, and which justifies our guilt.
THE USE OF THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF EVERY WAKING HOUR FOR PRACTICING THE IDEA FOR THE DAY HAS SPECIAL ADVANTAGES AT THE STAGE OF LEARNING IN WHICH YOU ARE AT PRESENT. IT IS DIFFICULT AT THIS POINT NOT TO ALLOW YOUR MIND TO WANDER, IF IT UNDERTAKES EXTENDED PRACTICE. YOU HAVE SURELY REALIZED THIS BY NOW. YOU HAVE SEEN THE EXTENT OF YOUR LACK OF MENTAL DISCIPLINE, AND OF YOUR NEED FOR MIND TRAINING. IT IS NECESSARY THAT YOU BE AWARE OF THIS, FOR IT IS INDEED A HINDRANCE TO YOUR ADVANCE.
Jesus is letting us know in no uncertain terms that he does not expect us to be totally faithful to the lessons: “It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander, if it undertakes extended practice.”
Thus he does not expect us to spend five minutes of every hour thinking of God, think of the lesson six or ten times an hour, or ask his help each and every time we get upset. Jesus is telling us, again, that he knows of our “lack of mental discipline,” which is why he provides us with so much structure, even though this is not ideal. Recall this statement from the manual for teachers: “Routines as such are dangerous, because they easily become gods in their own right, threatening the very goals for which they were set up (M-16.2:5).”
Yet Jesus is also saying we need routines and structure now, for reasons that are quite apparent. This is another example of Jesus gently informing us we are on the bottom rung of the ladder, and that we should not try to pretend we are any higher.
When we are higher on the ladder we will not need structure or discipline, nor will we need to practice the exercises. However, we are still at the bottom. In the aforementioned section in the manual, Jesus states: “To the advanced teacher of God this question [How should the teacher of God spend his day?] is meaningless. There is no program, for the lessons change each day. Yet the teacher of God is sure of but one thing; they do not change at random. Seeing this and understanding that it is true, he rests content…. But what about those who have not reached his certainty? They are not yet ready for such lack of structuring on their own part (M-16.1:1-4; 2:1-2).”
Speaking to us unadvanced ones at the bottom of the ladder, Jesus therefore says: “You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training”; hence the need for structure.
There are always those, however, who believe they are the exception. If you are among them, at least be clear about it. If you are like everyone else, your mind will wander, and you will be more concerned with preserving your specialness than with learning a thought system that undoes it.
Jesus is thus giving his students permission to be normal; i.e., to be fearful and forgetful. Yet he implies as well that we are not to feel guilty because of our forgetfulness. In effect, Jesus is telling us we would not need his course if our minds were trained, and if we were not already “too tolerant of mind wandering,” as he reminded Helen (T-2.VI.4:6).
His point is that we should not use our forgetting as an excuse not to do the lesson, or to conclude that A Course in Miracles is too difficult for us to practice and learn, and therefore why bother. Jesus is not asking that we do the lesson perfectly, to say this another way, but that when we fail to do it perfectly we forgive ourselves.
That is not beyond anyone’s capability. Again, Jesus is not saying that we have to be perfect students of the workbook; he is simply saying that we should be aware that we are not doing it perfectly.
That is why he says: “It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance.” The lack of mental discipline, which indicates our need for mind training, is the hindrance to our advance.
Yet it is not really the lack of mental discipline that is the hindrance, but our guilt over it. I have spoken before of a similar idea: the problem was not the tiny, mad idea, but choosing the ego’s interpretation of it, which always leads to guilt.
That is why the bottom line in undoing the ego thought system is undoing guilt. Jesus thus helps us understand that doing the workbook imperfectly is an excellent classroom for learning to undo our guilt. Indeed, the implication is that by doing the workbook imperfectly and then forgiving ourselves, we are actually doing the workbook perfectly and being perfect students. (5:1-2)
FREQUENT BUT SHORTER PRACTICE PERIODS HAVE OTHER ADVANTAGES FOR YOU AT THIS TIME. IN ADDITION TO RECOGNIZING YOUR DIFFICULTIES WITH SUSTAINED ATTENTION, YOU MUST ALSO HAVE NOTICED THAT, UNLESS YOU ARE REMINDED OF YOUR PURPOSE FREQUENTLY, YOU TEND TO FORGET ABOUT IT FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME.
Jesus is saying two things here: Not only do we have difficulty in sitting quietly for five, ten, or fifteen minutes without our minds wandering to thoughts our egos deem safe, but we have difficulty in even thinking about the need to sit quietly for five, ten, or fifteen minutes.
However, Jesus is not pointing an accusing finger, for he is teaching us to recognize that our “failures” are not coming from sin, but fear; the former are punished, the latter gently corrected. (5:3)
YOU OFTEN FAIL TO REMEMBER THE SHORT APPLICATIONS OF THE IDEA FOR THE DAY, AND YOU HAVE NOT YET FORMED THE HABIT OF USING THE IDEA AS AN AUTOMATIC RESPONSE TO TEMPTATION.
Once again Jesus is telling us he knows that we forget, and that it is all right. This is a course whose purpose is to undo our false learning through forgiveness, not instilling fear and reinforcing guilt through punishment. (6:1)
STRUCTURE, THEN, IS NECESSARY FOR YOU AT THIS TIME, PLANNED TO INCLUDE FREQUENT REMINDERS OF YOUR GOAL AND REGULAR ATTEMPTS TO REACH IT.
It is extremely important that you realize you are at the beginning of the journey, reflecting the humility without which learning A Course in Miracles is impossible. Being at the bottom rung of the spiritual ladder is not a sin. It is really quite fine, for at least you are on the right ladder with the right teacher, and you should feel grateful to yourself for choosing Jesus instead of the ego. Feeling guilty for being on the bottom rung, or feeling bad because you have to take baby steps while others are “higher up,” is the ego’s arrogance rearing its ugly head once more. Such arrogance, masquerading as humility, ensures you will never get anywhere.
The way a baby learns to run is learning first to crawl, then walk. Going from crawling to running ensures the child will never walk properly, let alone run. It is important to see ourselves as little children, with an elder brother to guide us.
If we insist we are older than we are, we will be much less prone to listen, because we will think we know as much as he. Thus will we remain spiritual cripples the rest of our lives, not being able to forgive, let alone love. (6:2)
REGULARITY IN TERMS OF TIME IS NOT THE IDEAL REQUIREMENT FOR THE MOST BENEFICIAL FORM OF PRACTICE IN SALVATION.
This is parallel to the phrase I just quoted from the manual: “Routines as such are dangerous….” (M-16.2:5). (6:3)
IT IS ADVANTAGEOUS, HOWEVER, FOR THOSE WHOSE MOTIVATION IS INCONSISTENT, AND WHO REMAIN HEAVILY DEFENDED AGAINST LEARNING.
If you are honest, you would say: “That includes me. My motivation is inconsistent, and I am `heavily defended against learning.’ I do not want to learn that my body, scintillating personality, and victimization stories are nothing.
I do not want to learn that being here is an attack on God’s Love, and an attempt to limit It. I do not want to learn that my self is made up, and is an attack on God and Christ. I want to learn instead how wonderful I am, and that Jesus is going to make me even more wonderful.”
Honesty lies in realizing this inconsistency and resistance, and accepting our need for the “regularity in terms of time” Jesus offers us. Returning to the manual for teachers once more, we read: “At the beginning, it is wise to think in terms of time.
This is by no means the ultimate criterion, but at the outset it is probably the simplest to observe. The saving of time is an essential early emphasis which, although it remains important throughout the learning process, becomes less and less emphasized. At the outset, we can safely say that time devoted to starting the day right does indeed save time (M-16.3:1-4).” Jesus continues with the day’s assignment: (7:1-2)
WE WILL, THEREFORE, KEEP TO THE FIVE-MINUTES-AN-HOUR PRACTICE PERIODS FOR A WHILE, AND URGE YOU TO OMIT AS FEW AS POSSIBLE. USING THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF THE HOUR WILL BE PARTICULARLY HELPFUL, SINCE IT IMPOSES FIRMER STRUCTURE.
We can again observe Jesus telling us that despite being aware of our lack of discipline, he is proceeding with “firmer structure,” since that is our need if we are to become disciplined. We now come to the heart of this discussion: (7:3-5)
DO NOT, HOWEVER, USE YOUR LAPSES FROM THIS SCHEDULE AS AN EXCUSE NOT TO RETURN TO IT AGAIN AS SOON AS YOU CAN. THERE MAY WELL BE A TEMPTATION TO REGARD THE DAY AS LOST BECAUSE YOU HAVE ALREADY FAILED TO DO WHAT IS REQUIRED. THIS SHOULD, HOWEVER, MERELY BE RECOGNIZED AS WHAT IT IS; A REFUSAL TO LET YOUR MISTAKE BE CORRECTED, AND AN UNWILLINGNESS TO TRY AGAIN.
Jesus does not use the word guilt here, but that is his subject. Guilt prevents the Holy Spirit from correcting our mistakes, by screaming: “I have committed sins that are beyond correction and forgiveness. I am thus a terrible person and a failure as a student of A Course in Miracles.”
The text’s discussion on sin versus error is relevant here, for it points to guilt’s critical role in the ego’s defensive thought system of protecting its separate existence: “It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible…. Sin calls for punishment as error for correction, and the belief that punishment is correction is clearly insane. Sin is not an error, for sin entails an arrogance which the idea of error lacks. To sin would be to violate reality, and to succeed. Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified. It assumes the Son of God is guilty, and has thus succeeded in losing his innocence and making himself what God created not…. The ego brings sin to fear, demanding punishment. Yet punishment is but another form of guilt’s protection, for what is deserving punishment must have been really done. Punishment is always the great preserver of sin, treating it with respect and honoring its enormity. What must be punished, must be true (T- 19.II.1:1,6; 2:1-4; T-19.III.2:2-5).”
Thus do we see that our individuality is preserved once it is called sin, protected by the experience of guilt, which demands the punishment that we fear. Moreover, the instant we feel guilt it will be driven underground, or repressed in our minds, because the feeling is intolerable.
Projection is inevitable, and our experience of sin and guilt metamorphoses into: It is someone else’s fault. The mind’s guilt is now safely buried, with no hope of it ever being undone, for the belief in another’s sin covers the cherished belief it is ours.
Returning to our failures to remember the requirements of the daily exercise, we can see that these are but fragmentary shadows of the original mistake when we forgot about God entirely, thinking: Concern over losing our individuality is too pressing, and so the God of Love and Oneness is the last thing we want to think about, for in remembering Him we find our Self, in which there is no self.
We relive this ontological instant over and over, as the following statement from the text makes clear: “Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love (T-26.V.13:1).”
Remember, there is no gap of billions of years between what we believe is occurring right now, and what we believe occurred in the original instant when “terror took the place of love.”
Linear time is an illusion, and all of it occurs in any given moment of our present experience. Each time we forget the workbook lesson, are upset, or neglect to ask Jesus for help, we relive that original moment – always present in our minds – when we pushed the Love of God away and said to the Holy Spirit: “I am not interested in what You say, even if it is the truth. I want only to maintain my individual and differentiated self.”
Rather than smile at the mistake, we judged it as sinful. The guilt became overwhelming, and we feared God’s wrathful punishment for our sin. To avoid this divine retribution we fled from our minds projected our sinful and guilty self and made a world in which everyone else is accused of sin, while we remain its innocent victims.
Again, this is the all-too-familiar scenario we relive when we forget our workbook lesson. Jesus is thus telling us the problem is not that we forgot, but that we were not willing to have the mistake be corrected by his gentle love.
We once again took the tiny mad idea (idea that is was possible to separate from God) seriously, and now need Jesus’ help to remember to smile its seriousness away, as the following core passage from the text urges us to do: “Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time (T-27.VIII.6:2-5).”
As an example, let us say you are doing this lesson, and are thus asked to think of God at the top of each hour. All of a sudden you realize it is 1:15, and you exclaim: “Oh dear, I did not think of the lesson at 1 o’clock; in fact I did not think of it at 12 o’clock, 11 o’clock, or 10 o’clock either, but I am remembering now at 1:15.”
You then should say to yourself: “I forgot because I was afraid. The individual needs of my specialness were so demanding that I had all I could do to pay attention to my body and those around me. And so I forgot because I was afraid, not bad. Wishing to preserve my special identification is not a sin, but a mistake to be corrected.
How wonderful that I now can see my resistance to learning this course! Yet, I remembered the lesson now, and can ask Jesus to help me look at what I did, understand why, and choose to accept his forgiveness rather than my ego’s guilt.”
This, then, is Jesus’ message to us here, and is echoed in the manual’s comforting message from the Holy Spirit, the answer to our belief in the reality of guilt. We present it again, this time with its introductory sentence: “Correction has one answer to all this [our belief in guilt], and to the world that rests on this: You but mistake interpretation for the truth. And you are wrong. But a mistake is not a sin, nor has reality been taken from its throne by your mistakes. God reigns forever, and His laws alone prevail upon you and upon the world. His Love remains the only thing there is. Fear is illusion, for you are like Him (M-18.3:6-12).” (8:1)
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS NOT DELAYED IN HIS TEACHING BY YOUR MISTAKES.
In other words, it does not matter how often you forget Who you are; the timeless truth of your Self is unaffected. Needless to say, this goes beyond the daily workbook lesson.
Whenever you are tempted to see yourself unfairly treated or not given the love and attention your specialness demands, go as quickly as possible within and say to Jesus: “I must be looking at this wrong, please help.”
His role in helping us forgive ourselves, learning not to take the tiny, mad idea seriously, constitutes the essence of our relationship with him. Again, Jesus is not delayed by our mistakes, but the experience of our happiness most definitely is. (8:2)
HE CAN BE HELD BACK ONLY BY YOUR UNWILLINGNESS TO LET THEM GO.
That is guilt’s purpose: to express our unwillingness to let mistakes go by labelling them as sins that demand punishment. Fear of this punishment is so overwhelming we have to project the sin and believe we are not the guilty, sinful ones.
That makes us paranoid, because we now look around with our beady, little eyes, seeking sin in others and terrified they will attack us. Yet all we see are our own attack thoughts projected outward.
The problem, however, does not lie in this, but in feeling guilty about it. Jesus, therefore, urges us to come to him as soon as we remember what we have done or failed to remember.
Again, even though guilt does not appear here, it underlies everything that is being said. It is the unwillingness to let sin go, for it is the irrevocable truth that deserves only punishment. (8:3-4)
LET US THEREFORE BE DETERMINED, PARTICULARLY FOR THE NEXT WEEK OR SO, TO BE WILLING TO FORGIVE OURSELVES FOR OUR LAPSES IN DILIGENCE, AND OUR FAILURES TO FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRACTICING THE DAY’S IDEA. THIS TOLERANCE FOR WEAKNESS WILL ENABLE US TO OVERLOOK IT, RATHER THAN GIVE IT POWER TO DELAY OUR LEARNING.
If we find our weakness intolerable, we are giving it now called sin – tremendous power, not only to delay our learning, but to destroy it and make forgiveness impossible. To repeat, the problem is never our failure to remember, nor our specialness or anger. It is our holding on to the perceived failure through guilt.
Remember, the ego always wants to prove that our individuality is true, which is accomplished by the belief in sin, which in turn is established by guilt. The ego, thus, wastes no time in trying to prove, over and over, how guilty we are. When you make a mistake, therefore, realize it came from fear, not from some inherent evil, wickedness, or sinfulness in you.
Then say to Jesus: “I was afraid of your love, for I was afraid of losing my individuality and specialness. Thus I had to protect myself by pushing you away, and that is why I forgot.”
If you have such a conversation with Jesus there will be no guilt, and without guilt there will be no problem. Feeling guilty, however, ensures the forgetting will recur.
That is why Jesus underscores the meaning of our daily practice of the workbook exercises. To make this point one more time: the way we overlook something is not by not seeing it, but by actually looking at it.
When we do, with Jesus’s love beside us, we look through it. Thus, as we have seen, overlooking really means looking beyond. (8:5)
IF WE GIVE IT POWER TO DO THIS [TO DELAY OUR LEARNING], WE ARE REGARDING IT AS STRENGTH, AND ARE CONFUSING STRENGTH WITH WEAKNESS.
If we allow ourselves to feel guilty over the “weakness” of forgetting the lesson, we reflect the underlying thought that the ego has destroyed God, rather than seeing the ego’s inherent weakness because it can do nothing.
To requote the text: “It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time (T-27.VIII.6:5).” This means there is no ego as well. The Atonement principle alone is our strength. (9:1-2)
WHEN YOU FAIL TO COMPLY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS COURSE, YOU HAVE MERELY MADE A MISTAKE. THIS CALLS FOR CORRECTION, AND FOR NOTHING ELSE.
In other words, “failure” is not a sin, for Jesus gives us permission to “fail to comply with the requirements.” He is not expecting us to be model students in terms of form. As I have stated, the best way to do the workbook and learn from it is to do it imperfectly, and then forgive yourself.
Thus you learn to forgive yourself for forgetting God in the beginning. Learning to forgive your mistakes is what turns you into a true model student. (9:3-4)
TO ALLOW A MISTAKE TO CONTINUE IS TO MAKE ADDITIONAL MISTAKES, BASED ON THE FIRST AND REINFORCING IT. IT IS THIS PROCESS THAT MUST BE LAID ASIDE, FOR IT IS BUT ANOTHER WAY IN WHICH YOU WOULD DEFEND ILLUSIONS AGAINST THE TRUTH.
This is telling us again that the way we stop making mistakes is by not feeling guilty. We avoid guilt by inviting Jesus in so he can look with us at our mistakes. He will then explain how we made them out of fear, not sin; and without sin, the guilt disappears.
If, however, guilt remains, it is certain we will repeat the error. With guilt in our minds, repression must occur, leading to projection in the form of the mistakes of attack and sickness.
Thus, when the belief in sin is undone, healing is accomplished for projection is impossible. Jesus now bridges the gap between his discussion of the individual workbook lesson and the real lesson: (10:1-2)
LET ALL THESE ERRORS GO BY RECOGNIZING THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE. THEY ARE ATTEMPTS TO KEEP YOU UNAWARE YOU ARE ONE SELF, UNITED WITH YOUR CREATOR, AT ONE WITH EVERY ASPECT OF CREATION, AND LIMITLESS IN POWER AND IN PEACE.
My awareness that I am one Self undoes my belief that I am separated. My errors – such as forgetting to do the workbook lesson every hour, or forgetting to ask Jesus for help when I am upset – are nothing more than the defense against losing my individual self, which I would certainly do if I remembered the day’s lesson.
Jesus continues by returning to the theme of the lesson, after having discussed how we will defend against it. “I am one Self, united with my Creator” means that everything I ever thought about myself is wrong, without exception. Forgetting this lesson, therefore, is my ego’s way of protecting itself from remembering the truth, which would lead me to forget the illusion I am a special self, separate from all others, and certainly separate from my Creator and Source: (10:3-4)
THIS IS THE TRUTH, AND NOTHING ELSE IS TRUE. TODAY WE WILL AFFIRM THIS TRUTH AGAIN, AND TRY TO REACH THE PLACE IN YOU IN WHICH THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT ONLY THIS IS TRUE.
We are returned to our task – remembering the truth – by bringing to it the illusions of our self. Thus our minds are cleansed of the ego’s silliness, and we have reached the inner place of truth. In the remaining five paragraphs of the lesson Jesus affirms this truth – we are one Self, at one with God and everyone else – and does so over and over and over again: (11)
BEGIN THE PRACTICE PERIODS TODAY WITH THIS ASSURANCE, OFFERED TO YOUR MIND WITH ALL THE CERTAINTY THAT YOU CAN GIVE: I am one Self united with my Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace.
THEN CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TELL YOURSELF AGAIN, SLOWLY AND THOUGHTFULLY, ATTEMPTING TO ALLOW THE MEANING OF THE WORDS TO SINK INTO YOUR MIND, REPLACING FALSE IDEAS: I am one Self.
REPEAT THIS SEVERAL TIMES, AND THEN ATTEMPT TO FEEL THE MEANING THAT THE WORDS CONVEY.
As we have discussed before, the process of healing set forth in A Course in Miracles is that of bringing the darkness of our ego’s illusions to the light of the Holy Spirit’s truth. This specifically means bringing our thoughts of specialness to the thought of forgiveness; the goal of satisfying our needs, and the sacrifice of another as the means of satisfying them, to our only need of recognizing all needs are the same.
Thus our daily lives reflect the truth of this lesson: “I am one Self, united with my Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace.” (12)
YOU ARE ONE SELF, UNITED AND SECURE IN LIGHT AND JOY AND PEACE. YOU ARE GOD’S SON, ONE SELF, WITH ONE CREATOR AND ONE GOAL; TO BRING AWARENESS OF THIS ONENESS TO ALL MINDS, THAT TRUE CREATION MAY EXTEND THE ALLNESS AND THE UNITY OF GOD. YOU ARE ONE SELF, COMPLETE AND HEALED AND WHOLE, WITH POWER TO LIFT THE VEIL OF DARKNESS FROM THE WORLD, AND LET THE LIGHT IN YOU COME THROUGH TO TEACH THE WORLD THE TRUTH ABOUT YOURSELF.
The way we bring “awareness of this oneness to all minds” is to demonstrate our shared interests to each other. In this manner the ego’s dark veil of separation and specialness is lifted from the minds of God’s Son, and the light of truth about ourselves allowed to shine forth: We are one Self.
This truth is reflected in acknowledging we are one in the separated mind as well every apparent fragment of the Sonship contains within itself the one problem and the one solution. (13)
YOU ARE ONE SELF, IN PERFECT HARMONY WITH ALL THERE IS, AND ALL THAT THERE WILL BE. YOU ARE ONE SELF, THE HOLY SON OF GOD, UNITED WITH YOUR BROTHERS IN THAT SELF; UNITED WITH YOUR FATHER IN HIS WILL. FEEL THIS ONE SELF IN YOU, AND LET IT SHINE AWAY ALL YOUR ILLUSIONS AND YOUR DOUBTS. THIS IS YOUR SELF, THE SON OF GOD HIMSELF, SINLESS AS ITS CREATOR, WITH HIS STRENGTH WITHIN YOU AND HIS LOVE FOREVER YOURS. YOU ARE ONE SELF, AND IT IS GIVEN YOU TO FEEL THIS SELF WITHIN YOU, AND TO CAST ALL YOUR ILLUSIONS OUT OF THE ONE MIND THAT IS THIS SELF, THE HOLY TRUTH IN YOU.
Our only function within the dream of separation is to undo the illusions of separate interests that hide the memory of our true Self. Jesus thus sets the stage for later lessons that will focus more specifically on forgiveness: the means taught by A Course in Miracles to remember our Identity and the Creator’s Love. (14)
DO NOT FORGET TODAY. WE NEED YOUR HELP; YOUR LITTLE PART IN BRINGING HAPPINESS TO ALL THE WORLD. AND HEAVEN LOOKS TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE THAT YOU WILL TRY TODAY. SHARE, THEN, ITS SURETY, FOR IT IS YOURS. BE VIGILANT. DO NOT FORGET TODAY. THROUGHOUT THE DAY DO NOT FORGET YOUR GOAL. REPEAT TODAY’S IDEA AS FREQUENTLY AS POSSIBLE, AND UNDERSTAND EACH TIME YOU DO SO, SOMEONE HEARS THE VOICE OF HOPE, THE STIRRING OF THE TRUTH WITHIN HIS MIND, THE GENTLE RUSTLING OF THE WINGS OF PEACE.
Even though the earlier part of this lesson discussed how resistance to remembering our Self impedes our practice and learning, Jesus continues to urge us to remember how important these lessons are to our happiness.
Moreover, the Sonship, which is us, needs our effort to awaken from its dreams of suffering and death, and feel the gentle rustlings of hope that rekindle light’s presence in our darkened minds.
Thus will the peace of Heaven come at last to replace the conflicts on earth. (15)
YOUR OWN ACKNOWLEDGMENT YOU ARE ONE SELF, UNITED WITH YOUR FATHER, IS A CALL TO ALL THE WORLD TO BE AT ONE WITH YOU. TO EVERYONE YOU MEET TODAY, BE SURE TO GIVE THE PROMISE OF TODAY’S IDEA AND TELL HIM THIS: You are one Self with me, united with our Creator in this Self I honor you because of What I am, and What He is, Who loves us both as One. It must be so, since “everyone you meet” is yourself.
Thus, as the text has reminded us: “When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself (1-8.111.4:1-7).”
Thus we end this important lesson by remembering to see each situation as another opportunity to correct the ego’s misperceptions of separation and specialness. We pledge ourselves, as we begin the day, to bring Jesus with us so we can remember we are one in the ego and one in spirit.
Thus this day, and all that follow, will be joyously filled with the promise of forgiveness as we return home together to the Oneness we never truly left, and which never left us.
